Question Do We Really Need 6,000 Satellites?

[Burbank Rob]

"The huge, ever-growing LEO [Starlink] constellation currently consists of 6,799 operational spacecraft," said Space.com on December 5, 2024. That seems like a lot.

 

[Classical Motion]

After 25 years of google maps, I’m hoping for a modern version. Real time, zoom-able, high resolution satellite views. With the ability to recall past views to compare with.

Daily satellite library. A catalog. In the future, herds, flocks and even schools will be tracked. Like people are now.

I’ll bet 10 years from now, 6000 will be a very low number.

 

[DanIAm]

6000 in LEO is not many.

There is a lot of space in space, e.g. the circumference of the equator is 25,000 miles/40,000km and Starlink obviously doesn't travel only around the equator but spreads across the globe - Starlink is in 24 orbital planes, so 6000 satellites in 24 planes is 250 satellites per orbital plane (or in a sense, it's 250 satellites per 40,000km line) and they will all be going in one direction on that plane at the same speed, 160km away from the next one. If there is a problem with one, they can deorbit it within weeks, even if one completely malfunctions, it will fall back to earth by itself in a few years.

Alternative constellations to Starlink won't crowd into Starlinks layer, they'll pick a different altitude and have that to themselves, so completely seperate shells/layers. So don't think in 2d terms like a map of the world, it's in 3d and consequently so much bigger. A bakers oven might fit 100 muffins on a shelf, but with 10 shelves it would have space for 1000 muffins (sorry to any and all bakers, it was for illustrative purposes, I dont know how many muffins/oven ).